Local author Dana Sachs (“If You Lived Here,” “The House on Dream Street,” “The Life We Were Given”) will be giving a preview reading of her new novel, “The Secret of the Nightingale Palace,” at 3 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 24, at Cameron Art Museum, 3201 S. 17th St.

As fans know, most of Sachs’ work has focused on Vietnam, where she lived for many years as a student and English teacher. “Secret of the Nightingale Palace” — which comes out today (Feb. 19) from William Morrow — is her first with no Vietnamese content.

She hasn’t left Asia entirely, though. “Nightingale Palace” follows a young Memphis widow who has to drive her rather high-maintenance Jewish grandmother from New York to San Francisco, on a mysterious mission to return some Japanese prints to their rightful owner.

In flashbacks, we see the grandma, Goldie, as a young woman who travels to San Francisco, finds work in a big department store and becomes friends with a brilliant young Japanese-American artist who designs the store’s window displays. Through her, Goldie gets to know her parents, a former Japanese baron and baroness, who maintain the city’s Japanese Garden. (From here, things get complicated, and there’s a lot of romance …)

In honor of the topic, the Cameron is having Sachs speak in its Japanese print room in the C. Reynolds Brown wing.

Regular museum admission applies: $8 adults, $5 students, seniors and active-duty military: $3 for children. You can tour the exhibits after the talk.

Incidentally, Dana Sachs will be our next guest on Prologue, the StarNews/WHQR book club, coming up March 11 in the WHQR studios. Watch your newspaper for more details.

Submit Your Comments

Name

Required

Mail

Required, will not be published

Website

Comment

Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive. For more information, please see our Comments FAQ.

About This Blog

This is an emporium for all things literary: occasional book reviews, local book news, items about authors (mostly from the Cape Fear area but occasional visitors) and miscellaneous rants.

The usual author is Ben Steelman, feature writer and book columnist for the Star-News. He’s that shaggy, slightly smelly character you spot lurking in the back aisles of your local bookstore. Physically, he has more than a passing resemblance to Ignatius J. Reilly, hero of John Kennedy Toole’s “A Confederacy of Dunces” — some observers have noted other parallels as well.